I've recently got hold of a second hand board (see other thread) and when I bought it, I knew that one of the fins had been replaced, but when i looked the fin up it appears to be a windsurfing fin. and also 2cm shorter than the fin on the other side.

Can windsurfing fins be used as replacements (they certainly seem to be cheaper!)? I can't notice any cant on the 'other' fin if that makes any difference, it appears to be a straight fin.

Other issue you may have is that those fins are power box fins , very popular in sailboards 10 -15 years ago and still used to this day,. Every kite raceboard I have seen in the past 3 years has Tuttle fins ,( seems that kiteboard and fin manufacturers have used the Tuttle box pattern as a standard).this may make it a bit of a bitch to track down some decent 2nd hand kite board fins.

You will be able to ride on the straight none canted windsurfer power box fins But the front fins at least have to be the same size.

I have a board I built about 4-5years ago which runs straight power box fins and it rides ok , but it's got nothing on my Mikeslab with techtonics.

Out of interest, how do you know if your fins are the right size?I guess if they're too big, the board is always wanting to flip windward rail over leeward? How can you tell if they're too small? Should you feel 'fin torque' but not too much to cause board flipping? or is this a totally undesirable effect?

The original fins for my 2011 59cm wide board were 26 cm and 24 cm (I think). They were too small. It was difficult to ride the board flat. The heel side was always lower in the water no matter how much I pushed against the fins/put weight on my toes.

Then I picked up a set of used Rista fins 37cm and 33 cm. These were from a 65cm wide board and were a little too big for my board. In light wind they worked great, much better upwind, but I got overpowered pretty quickly. When I got too much power in the kite, the fins would get loaded up too much and the windward rail would pick up out of the water. Then the whole board would foil up, the fins would ventilate, and I'd lose a lot of speed. Made it tough to control.

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